Jonathan V. Last says bloggers are always saying how easy journalism is,yet very few of them have ever really practiced it. "Real journalism --the practice of adding to the store of public knowledge by reportingnews -- is a difficult, thankless, and often unpleasant task. Bloggerswant no part of it. Everyone wants E.J. Dionne's job; no one wants to beMichael Dobbs. ...Taken as a whole, the Old Media performs an enormous andvaluable function that the New Media is neither able, nor inclined, toemulate."

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Friday, April 21, 2006

The Bay Area newspaper landscape could undergo a seismic change if Denver's MediaNews Group purchases from Sacramento's McClatchy Co. the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and two other papers in a $1 billion deal that a published report said might happen this week.

MediaNews, the country's seventh-largest newspaper publisher, owns the Oakland Tribune, Marin Independent Journal and several other local papers. It would immediately become the biggest newspaper operation in the Bay Area if it were to acquire the Mercury News and Contra Costa Times.

...

A MediaNews purchase could face such obstacles as antitrust scrutiny, labor opposition and shareholder inquiries about whether McClatchy got the best price. But experts said a deal would probably overcome those hurdles.

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Selling the papers to MediaNews would help McClatchy raise more than $2 billion from the sale of the 12 papers. And it would provide MediaNews and its CEO, William Dean Singleton, with a more powerful presence throughout the Bay Area.

Singleton has built a newspaper empire through a strategy of "clustering" -- owning groups of nearby newspapers that can share resources like printing presses and staff, and can offer a larger circulation reach for advertisers.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

I just stumbled on this story on the NYT web site. This quote left me dumbstruck:

Mr. Koch said that his wife is now expecting their third child in June, and Ms. Onassis' former apartment will be too small for their expanded family. "There's just no way we could fit another child in that apartment," he said.

The Fifth Avenue apartment has four bedrooms, two dressing rooms, a staff room, a library, living room, dining room, conservatory, two terraces, three fireplaces, five and a half bathrooms and a wine room, according to a floor plan provided by the broker who will be selling it, Leighton Candler, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group.

The article doesn't say what the place's square footage is, but it's probably twice that of the biggest house owned by anyone who reads this...

Sunday, April 02, 2006

This story is a little over the top, but has a point. I identify mainly with its discussion about rising with the sun. When my in-laws took us on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon two years ago, we rose each day around 5:30 (just as the sky was lightening) and went to bed each night just after the sun went down. It felt so natural, just like it felt natural to walk around on the sandy banks of the Colorado River barefoot. I so wanted to cling to this natural wake-sleep schedule when we got home, but it was impossible. Oh well.